Category: Uncategorized

Thinking back on our vows, it’s easy to let time corrode what you promise to give one another.

It’s easy to get complacent.

It’s easy to let a flame go out.

It takes work to keep things going, through good and bad, and be able to look at your partner and say: I’m still in this, I’m still with you, and we’re going to do this together.

Maybe when we picked “Come Rain or Come Shine” by Ray Charles as our wedding song, those lyrics would become more profound with each passing year.

October 11 will mark nine years since we tied the knot.

Marissa asked me last week, what I recall with the most fondness from our previous year of marriage (from year eight to year nine).

And I remarked that this year seemed like one year in particular where we seemed to be focused on everyone else around us “almost” more than on each other.

This past year was one where the health of family members took priority, where parenting became more of a focal point than a focus on the marriage.

And that may sound like a bad thing, but I don’t think it was.

We (re)built a foundation that allowed us to put our focus on the people who needed it, when they needed it, and knowing our marriage would not only survive but thrive.

It’s also been a year where we’ve had to renew the focus on our own personal health.

I started the year getting updated bloodwork to see how my own health was trending. Fortunately, anything that required attention was an easy fix with some simple diet tweaks and some supplementation. At this point in my life, I don’t need to be on any medication and I’m thankful for that.

Marissa has also been struggling with some health issues as well over the past couple of years, and we’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into trying to get that resolved, too. Unfortunately, she’s had fewer obvious solutions which requires us to go further down the rabbit hole of specializations and tests upon tests, to get the answers that she/we need.

We made a pact a couple of years ago that if we were going to put our money somewhere, it would be in how we feed our family. We can’t afford (physically or financially) to let our health slip out of control if we can help it.

Some illnesses will come up that we have less control over and we have to find the right people to help along the way. That’s the beauty and privilege of a medical system that can work towards answers.

We’ve reached an age where it’s not just about caring for our health, but it’s trying to live the best lives we can for the benefit of Jackson and Sebastian and to help care for and care with our own parents who are inevitably growing closer to an age where they need help we can provide.

If there’s a bit of advice I can give you, based on our lessons learned from this year, it’s to stay up with your bloodwork and the advice of your doctors so that nothing slips past you beyond a point where you can change it. We weren’t meant to live forever but I’ve yet to meet the person who isn’t trying to add quality to their years in this world.

And to my wife, to another year of love, of teamwork and support, of parenting and growing together. It’s been another unique year to a love story that has continued to show resiliency.

Ray said it best: I’m gonna love you, like no one’s loved you, come rain or come shine.

There appears to be two opposing forces in our lives:

The one that begs you to hustle and grind and the one that urges you to pause and find calm.

Both have value but it’s a delicate balance trying to find when to switch one off and turn the other on.

Our phones, our inbox, and our itineraries make us slaves to convenience and urgency.

There is the call to be efficient, and hyper-productive as a badge of honor to wear around those who rely on what we do and do well.

On the other side, we need the gravitational pull of stillness, of quiet, and reflection to ease the chaos.

This happens in our professional lives and our personal lives.

Several years ago, I recognized these two forces with my work and it reminded me that I needed to split our day into two training blocks: an A.M. shift and a P.M. shift with a handful of hours as downtime in between.

It was the best way to have the hustle and grind bookending the work day with a strategic calm in the middle.

There had to be a way to honor and recognize both needs.

Of course, it’s easy to get busy being busy and it’s easy to fill up time in the white space of a daily planner not taking the time to recharge but only finding more places to do more.

Much like our smartphones, we get a lot of usage and mileage out of a day, but if you don’t get back on the charger you don’t have much life to offer others.

Some people use meditation.

Some people use prayer.

Some people use apps and websites designed to turn off our computers or phones and block distractions.

I have to remind myself to find the calm, especially when I sit down and eat a meal.

One of my most counterproductive eating behaviors is to eat a meal at a frighteningly fast pace.

It’s a conscious act to slow down, set my fork down, and stop…savor…breathe.

Of note, this is one of the best tips I can give you if you’re struggling with your weight.

Slow Down.

Many of the foods we fill our cabinets and freezers with are custom designed to be consumed and consumed quickly, long before our bodies register any feelings of satiety.

What works in our lives, both personal and professional, works with (or against) our diets and affects our stress levels and sleep habits.

So, take a moment after reading this and look at the areas in your day and your week where you’re rushing from one task to the next, not pausing to find the calm.

If need be, schedule that time.

Life will rarely slow down on purpose.

When you make the time, show appreciation for it.

The time to grind can wait.

(Photo courtesy of Melissa Askew)

There are some scenarios that stay with you for a lifetime.

For me, I was sexually abused by my babysitter sometime around kindergarten and first grade.

Not having the emotional or mental maturity to handle it back then, I managed to stuff the experience away until I was in my late teens when a friend of mine and I were discussing a similar incident for her and it flooded me with memories of what happened in my own life.

I didn’t know it then, but that experience had been affecting me in ways I couldn’t understand or appreciate.

I began identifying with elements of depression and suicidal ideation shortly thereafter and went to our family doctor to start addressing it.

That began a process more than two decades in the making and reached a relative conclusion just over the past couple of years.

By saying conclusion, I don’t mean that the experience no longer affects me. I believe it will always affect me.

What I mean is that, I feel I’ve reached a point in my life and my healing process where the event which took place all those years ago has less of a chance of negatively effecting me or the people I care about.

Here are the seven steps I took to heal:

1-I acknowledged that the event took place. By reaching out to our family doctor all those years ago, I recognized that something was wrong. I had vivid memories of what happened and I was trying to make the pieces fit in my mind so that I could get help. Our doctor encouraged me to write about it, express my feelings about it and, perhaps, to confront my abuser. The former suggestions were relatively easy to do. I realized that I had already been writing about the event through poems and songs as a way to understand what I was feeling. It was the confrontation that took more effort.

2-I confronted my abuser. I worked up the nerve one night in college to see if I could track my abuser down. Fortunately, he still lived in the same town where the abuse took place. I called the operator, asked to be connected to him and was able to reach him late one evening. Initially, he denied what happened by saying that he didn’t recall the events. To his credit, 13-14 years had passed since the incident. However, there were details I could provide which made it indisputable. He knew what he did and he knew that he couldn’t deny it.

3-I forgave my abuser. I was in an interesting place spiritually when I made that phone call. My abuser was at a point in his career where he realized that I could ruin everything he had worked for. I believe, that when he started crying and apologizing on that phone call, that he expected I was looking for some type of retribution. I wasn’t. I knew that I needed closure and I was hoping that the phone call and confrontation would give me that. I told him I forgave him. At the time, I believed it. I’ve never spoken to him since then.

4-I recognized that the event was still affecting me. Fast forward over twenty years, and despite surviving a decade of hard drug abuse, and burning more bridges around me than I could count, my marriage was falling into a rut. I went back to therapy in my 40s so I could understand why something I felt was no longer affecting my behavior was still lurking in the background. My therapist helped me understand that I had never fully processed the trauma that had occurred. What I had succeeded in doing was finding every other maladaptive coping skill to numb my feelings rather than sit with them and understand them.

5-I wrote a letter to my abuser. One of the things my therapist asked me to do was to write a letter to my abuser. The letter never needed to be sent. It was a way to document how I was feeling at that time, to express anything I felt needed to be said, especially since the event was still having an effect on me whether I accepted it or not. Truth be told, it was an easy letter to write. I was angry, I was hurt and I was frustrated that I was still having to deal with the fallout from something that had happened so long ago.

6-I wrote a letter to myself. This was another strategy my therapist gave me. He asked me to write a letter to myself at the age the event took place. More pointedly: What would I say to myself right after it happened? I knew this would be far more difficult to do. I had to put myself back into my shoes as a father. What would I say to either of my sons, if God forbid, a similar event happened to them. When I finally came to grips with how I would do it, I decided to make the letter public.

7-I changed the narrative from victim to survivor. My therapist gave me a handful of books to read. He wanted me to see how similar events affected others and to draw a link to what I was experiencing. He knew that I needed to find a way to not feel so alone with what I was going through. The fact is, there will always be someone who “had it worse.” However, by saying that, that doesn’t allow me to heal my individual pain. When you accept the role of victim, it keeps you down. You don’t recognize a way out, a way to heal, a way to process or to feel whole again. When I changed the verbiage in my mind from victim to survivor, I had hope. It wasn’t that my abuser had me fearing for my life. It’s that the emotional fallout from the event nearly killed me. I was a survivor. I AM a survivor. The words we use to describe ourselves can paralyze us or free us. I was no longer going to live in paralysis. I was no longer going to actively numb out the pain I was feeling.

Every time I write these types of articles, I feel like I leave of piece of myself with it. What I can’t accept is that more people (men or women) don’t feel they have the space to confront and heal their trauma. Maybe they hide it because they don’t want to feel vulnerable or weak in front of others. For myself, it’s not only to remove the stigma of talking about it, it’s to remind the abusers who live among us that they’ll be discovered; that no person should ever experience abuse and, hopefully, bringing it to light could save someone’s life.

Each time I write something like this, someone I know confesses to me that they lived through a similar experience. Often, they haven’t thought about it in years and the subject brings a lot to the surface. I see far too many clients struggle with their body image and their diets because of a trauma like mine (often referred to as Big “T” Trauma). Diets don’t heal trauma. Therapy does.

So, if you’re struggling, start your process. Get help.

Most importantly, find your voice, because these things can’t keep happening.

When I started RevFit back in 2009, I knew my mornings would start early.

Clients wanted to be able to train before they went to work, which meant that training would start roughly around 5-530am each weekday.

Early mornings (with a 20-25 minute commute from home) meant going early to bed so that I could get a decent night’s sleep before the next day began.

Back then, I probably woke up around 4am each day.

Years later, a buddy of mine was talking about a psychological “trick” he would play with himself where he would set his alarm about 5 minutes before the hour he needed to wake up. He wanted less of an opportunity to snooze his way through the start of his day.

The trick seemed worth trying so I pushed my alarm back to 3:55 for a period of time.

Then, I wanted a bit more time to try and add some meditation to my day, and ten minutes of meditating seemed a reasonable amount of time.

This pushed my wake time to 3:45am and it stayed that way for over six years (long after I put meditation on the backburner).

As a result, my sleep time would average 6.5-7 hours each night, sometimes restful, sometimes not.

This is certain: since 2009, the one thing I haven’t done is gotten younger.

The days are still very physical and depending on the span of the day, sometimes the mental work is more draining than the physical.

So, about two months ago, I changed my alarm from 3:45am to 4:15am to see how/if the extra half hour would help me.

So far, the answer is yes.

It does affect how much time I have to get my mind right in the morning before work but I’ve realized that I need to prioritize sleep. If my sleep isn’t right, the rest of the day (and potentially the week) won’t be right either.

I’ve written about time management several times on this site. For many of my clients, time management affects the decisions they make about food and the decisions they make about when or if they can fit in their training.

However, sleep influences those things as well. How we sleep influences our stress levels, our food cravings, our ability to recover from workouts and our cognitive functions.

Maybe sleep isn’t your challenge.

Maybe you work too many hours and you can’t fit in your training.

Maybe you spend so much time chauffeuring your children around that you have no time for yourself.

Maybe the lure of four hours of an addictive, streaming show is too great for you to have a self care routine.

I realized I wasn’t doing myself any favors by rigidly adhering to a wake time that was no longer serving me.

And as you fight for time, where does your energy go?

Is it going to waste?

(Photo courtesy of Morgan Housel)

I love questions. I love questions that get to the heart of problems. I love questions that guide you to the solutions of problems. I love questions that can be uncomfortable and questions that may spark an emotion.

With fat loss, there are countless questions to ask and, as a coach, I love asking them. It will never be as simple as “eat less, move more.” Rather, why is it so difficult to eat less and move more?

I wrote this week’s article inspired by a post I put on Instagram last week which was only ten questions. I realized that I had far more than ten questions to ask and, to be fair, I could do another post like this one as a companion and come up with another 99 questions to ask.

But this post is for you, the person trying to lose fat and for coaches who want to dig in deeper with their clients. Keep it, share it, but most importantly, WORK through it.

It may make you uncomfortable. It may stir things up in you that you haven’t considered or thought about in ages. These questions are presented without judgement and I encourage you to answer them without judging yourself.

If I had any wish, it would be that these questions point you on a path to success.

1. Why is fat loss important for you?
2. When you answer #1, why is THAT important?
3. Do you have a history of an eating disorder?
4. If the answer to #3 is YES, have you worked with a therapist to heal and repair that?
5. When do you recall starting your first diet?
6. What do you remember about that experience?
7. What is your earliest memory of how you view your body?
8. Who influenced that opinion?
9. Do you still have the same opinion now?
10. How do you accept and acknowledge compliments about your appearance?
11. What makes you feel good about your appearance?
12. Would you value yourself more if you weighed less?
13. How would fat loss impact your health?
14. Would your workplace performance improve if you lost fat?
15. Do you turn down invitations to social events because of your current weight/body shape?
16. If the answer to #15 is YES, what scenarios do you turn down?
17. Would succeeding at fat loss make it easier for you to play with your children, grandchildren, or pets?
18. Is fat loss something that you desire for yourself or has someone else asked you to focus on fat loss? If so, who?
19. Who are the people you are closest to that influence how you eat? Consider your spouse, or the person you are romantically involved with, parents, siblings, children, friends, and co-workers.
20. Who buys the groceries for your home?
21. What foods can you successfully moderate the intake of and what foods do you feel you are unable to currently moderate?
22. Does the person who buys the groceries know about the foods listed in #21?
23. If the answer to #22 is YES, how often are the foods that you are currently unable to moderate purchased for the home?
24. Do you frequently or seldom use food as a reward?
25. Do you have a list of coping mechanisms that you can utilize when you are stressed out?
26. If the answer to #25 is YES, how often do you use that list?
27. In looking at the list of people in #19, who do you believe sabotages your fat loss efforts?
28. Does that person/those people know that you feel that way?
29. If the answer to #28 is YES, has the behavior improved? If the answer to #28 is NO, how do you plan to inform them of your feelings?
30. Who is the most supportive person/group of your fat loss goals?
31. How do they successfully support you?
32. Do you feel that you struggle more with diet adherence during the week or during the weekends?
33. How can you improve the days referenced in #32?
34. How many diets have you tried in your life that you can recall?
35. Which diets were most successful?
36. What do you believe made them successful?
37. Would any of those diets be successful for you now?
38. If the answer to #37 is YES, which ones and why? If the answer is NO, why would that be?
39. Do you have a consistent, restful, sleep schedule?
40. If the answer to #39 is NO, what contributes to that?
41. Do you feel that your life is currently more stressful than normal?
42. What’s contributing to your current stress level?
43. How do you effectively manage stress in your life?
44. Are you currently taking any medications?
45. If the answer to #44 is YES, have you spoken with your doctor to see if those medications have a tendency to cause weight gain, weight loss or are they considered weight neutral?
46. How many days per week do you engage in cardiovascular activity? Also, how many minutes on average do you dedicate to that activity?
47. How many days per week do you engage in strength/resistance training? Also, how many minutes on average do you dedicate to that activity?
48. Do you believe that you burn a considerable amount of calories with your workouts referenced in #46 and #47?
49. If the answer is YES to number #48, how many calories do you believe that to be and how do you measure it?
50. Do you believe that your relationship with food is influenced by trauma in your life (either as a child or as an adult)?
51. If the answer to #50 is YES, have you/are you working with a therapist to develop coping skills for the trauma in your past?
52. Do you have an ideal weight you’d like to be at?
53. Why is that number important?
54. When was the last time you were at that weight?
55. If it’s not realistic that you could reach that weight again based on current life demands, what is a weight that would be acceptable to you?
56. If you were going to start losing fat today, what’s the first change you would make?
57. Is the answer to #56 an easy change to make?
58. What do you believe would be one of the hardest changes you’d have to make to be successful at fat loss?
59. Based on the answer to #58, what makes that so difficult?
60. Do you engage in any body-checking?
61. How do you compare your body against others? In other words, do you compare against individuals of the same age, same gender, same social class?
62. Do you have any diagnosed problems with your thyroid?
63. Do you have lipadema?
64. Do you have PCOS or PCOS with insulin resistance?
65. Do you currently have Type I or Type II diabetes?
66. Have you successfully counted calories or tracked macronutrients?
67. If the answer to #66 is YES, do you enjoy the data aspect of tracking food?
68. How often are you comfortable weighing yourself?
69. Do you actively practice body appreciation?
70. If the answer to #69 is YES, what do you appreciate about your body and what it’s capable of?
71. What conversations about fat loss, dieting or body image do you have in the home with your family?
72. What dieting method (vegan, intermittent fasting, ketogenic, etc) do you feel most closely aligned with?
73. Based on the answer of #72, is that a fairly easy diet to adhere to in your life?
74. Also, based on the answer of #72, does anyone in your family follow that diet? If the answer is YES, who is that and did they influence you in starting that diet method or do they follow it in efforts to support you?
75. Do you have any food allergies? If so, what are they?
76. Do you have any food intolerances? If so, what are they?
77. Based on the answer to #76, can you have small doses of those foods or none at all?
78. If you are in the menopause transition, have you noticed any sensitivities to foods that didn’t exist prior to the transition? If so, what are they?
79. Do you feel that you snack a lot, very little or never?
80. If you snack a lot, how can you improve that?
81. Do you drink alcohol? If so, how much and how often?
82. How much do fluids (aside from water) contribute to your daily intake? Consider any juices, carbonated beverages, energy drinks, alcohol and protein shakes.
83. Do you take any supplements? If so, which ones?
84. In looking at your daily food intake, would you say that your meals are mostly balanced or are some meals significantly larger than others? If the latter, can you describe how they differ?
85. Do you engage in any sneak eating behaviors? If the answer is YES, how many calories do you believe that contributes to your day?
86. Do you frequently, seldom or never reward yourself with food based on what you believe you burn during exercise?
87. What do you believe is a reasonable amount of weight/fat to lose per week?
88. If you were unable/unwilling to count calories, how would you approach fat loss for yourself?
89. Do you keep a record or journal of how you feel when you eat certain foods?
90. Do you periodically purge your social media accounts and unfollow people or pages who don’t make you feel good about yourself?
91. Are there certain topics related to food that you find you’re drawn to such as: organic, clean eating, toxins, genetically modified, or “fat burning”? If the answer is YES, which topics interest you and why?
92. What is the average amount of time you can successfully follow a diet plan before you start thinking it isn’t working?
93. Who do you follow for advice on nutrition? What are their qualifications?
94. What are the most satisfying foods for you to eat which reduce your feelings of hunger?
95. Do you enjoy cooking your own meals?
96. When was the last time you used measuring cups, measuring spoons and/or a food scale for intake accuracy?
97. How do you practice gratitude for your health?
98. What do you love most about yourself?
99. What’s the worst that could happen if you never lost another pound?

(Photo courtesy of AllGo)

At risk of titling this article in a misleading fashion, what you’re about to read is not necessarily for individuals who are looking to maximize building muscle on their bodies.

Rather, I wanted to write something about strength in general and how food can help.

Look everywhere around you, and if you had to judge a book by its cover (which is often foolish), you could jump to conclusions about how food is affecting a given body.

Some people eat too much.

Some people eat too little.

Some people look fit.

Some people look frail.

And for any of those examples, nutrition plays a crucial role.

We eat in times of happiness and sadness, when we’re bored and when we’re celebrating, we eat to fuel a marathon, and we eat to lose fat.

The last couple of months have reminded me of a bitter side to life which is what happens when people stop eating.

We see how people eat when they feel weak and when they feel sick. When food is neither comfort nor pleasure.

We see people near the end of their lives where their appetite has all but left them.

I spend so much of my professional life coaching people to eat for better health, how to eat to achieve their physique goals, and how to simply treat food as if it is an ally and not an enemy.

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: look everywhere around you, in every aspect of your life.

We are not afforded the luxury of weakness.

And because we’re not afforded that luxury, the alternative, the most viable alternative, is to be strong.

But strength is not created from nothing.

It requires energy.

And the food we consume is energy.

Strength is mental.

Strength is physical.

Strength is emotional.

Young people strive to attain it and older people fight like hell to keep from losing it.

If I impress nothing else on you, I’d only wish that you read this article and ask yourself:

Am I nourishing my body in a way that supports my strength?

I ask you not to overanalyze it, I ask you not to focus solely on calories or macronutrients.

I want you to take the decades of understanding that you indisputably know about nutrition, because you have fed your body countless times:

Do my choices make me stronger so I can conquer all that life throws my way?

(Photo courtesy of Ben White)

One of the most difficult things to navigate when it comes to improving our health via getting stronger or getting leaner is understanding how the inherent stress of dieting or training adds (or takes away) from the stress of our lives.

The last two months of my life have been some of the most stressful of recent memory. Between my side of the family and my wife’s, we’ve seen multiple health issues come up which not only have an emotional impact on us but require us to spread our time around to help every family member in need.

In the midst of that is parenting, running a business and trying to keep enough in the tank to focus on the marriage.

Stress is a constant. Sometimes we have more of it, sometimes we have less of it, but it’s just as much a part of our lives as oxygen.

Just last week, I was only able to work two full days at my studio because I needed to be out of town for a family health procedure.

On the days I was able to make it in to work, I knew I needed to focus on getting as much work done as I could, still try and fit in my own training and keep myself well nourished so I didn’t run out of steam.

It’s days like that where I have to remind myself: Don’t push too hard, you don’t have it in the tank.

You probably know the feeling.

For some people, they use stress in their lives as a reason to not focus on themselves. They’re pulled in too many different directions and they forget to prioritize themselves.

I try not to make that mistake.

If I don’t care for myself, everything else suffers: work, training, sleep, family dynamics, etc.

But I do have to keep a constant conversation with myself over what I can realistically handle and where I have to pump the brakes.

It’s not an open invitation to do nothing, it’s an invitation to lay all of my priorities in front of me and determine what needs the most of my energy right then and there.

It’s one of the main reasons why progress is rarely linear.

Life happens.

And we have to figure out:

Where do our goals fit into the picture?

How do our values line up with our decision making?

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel where things invariably slow down so that we have the energy to fill our cups?

Fortunately, things are starting to slow down for us over the next week or so. That may not mean “calm” but it does mean “calmer”.

You have to take those opportunities when they come.

And if you have goals that matter to you, keep up that mental conversation: Is it time to press the gas or do I need to pump the brakes?

(Photo courtesy of Jan Kopriva)

It’s common in the health/wellness world to hear about a 90-day timeline for progress. 

If you want a stronger, fitter body, you stay consistent with a 90 day training plan. 

If you’re trying to succeed with fat loss, you work a 90-day nutrition/training program.

Many coaches (myself included for my online clients) may offer services with a 90 day minimum commitment. 

The goal being: that you can develop a foundation of trends and patterns to plot a path towards success. 

The funny thing is, there’s nothing magical about 90 days. 

Within the research of forming habits, you can form habits in less time and sometimes it takes much longer than 90 days for a habit to stick.

However, 90 days is a measurable and realistic timeline for most people to envision, rationalize, and plan for. 

I recently invested in a 90 day program myself. This one is aimed at social media growth specifically for Instagram. 

I’ve been spending the last couple of years consistently posting content on Instagram and have been trying to learn and navigate the ever-changing algorithms and understand how I can best serve my followers and position my online services. 

That being said, I’m no expert and while I never have a shortage of content ideas, that doesn’t mean that I’m posting the right content for the platform.

So, just as any of my clients might hire me for coaching strength training or nutrition, I knew when I was out of my depth and it was time to learn more for myself. 

What I find interesting is that many of the same tics of human nature in fat loss and exercise are also in social media growth. 

You see, I’m in a group coaching program and many of my fellow colleagues are also service providers. Some are just getting started and have very few followers. Some are more tenured and experienced and have many more followers but are trying to scale higher. 

Our leader has grown her platform by leaps and bounds and we’re all following her guidance to see what works best for us. 

And, as you can appreciate, we’ve all been asked to embark on a 90-day reels challenge.

In other words, we have to post a reel a day for 90 days and continue to tweak the way the message is delivered to see what resonates with our audience, our avatar, and our communication styles. 

It’s still in its early stages (we’re not even two weeks in) and you can sense the frustration, impatience, and wonder that happens when things work as expected, worse than expected, and when nothing makes sense at all. 

Suffice to say, we don’t have control over how the algorithm operates. We only have control over our consistency and how we deliver our message. 

Our fearless leader reminds us to stay focused on the goal, don’t get too caught up in the numbers, and be patient! 

Sound familiar? 

Fat loss is not much different. 

You can be doing all the right things and the scale will go up. 

You can take a dietary detour and shockingly, the scale might go down. 

Fat loss is one area (and not exclusively) where effort doesn’t always equate to desired results…but you have to put forth the effort anyway.

And my 90 day experiment is similar. 

It’s easy to be impatient. It’s easy to doubt the process. It’s easy to want instant gratification. 

But there are too many variables that are out of my control. 

What I can do: is learn the trends, craft better hooks, be attuned to my audience, engage where I can, improve on my communication skills and be genuinely myself. 

If you’re struggling with your plan, there’s a lesson here for you too. 

Stay consistent, stay curious, change what you need, be patient, control what you can, and stay the course. 

We’re all trying to improve what we can in our personal and professional lives. Don’t get too lost in the minutiae that you forget about the big picture. 

And if you want to watch my 90 day journey, you can find me at: jasonleenaarts

(Photo courtesy of Paul Engel)

I knew of Sean Carlin long before I ever met him.

In 1993, I was in Kent, Ohio recording my first album with a high school friend at Electro-Sound Studios led by an engineer named Greg Feezel.

Greg had recorded the sessions for many local musicians and Sean Carlin’s band Dink was one of them.

If you paid attention to alternative music in the early 90s, you might recognize Dink by the hit that made the waves on MTV, “Green Mind.” You see, back in the 90s, Dink achieved what nearly every person in a band ever dreamed of: they signed to a major label and toured everywhere. Sadly, the band only lasted a handful of years.

It would be 16 years later that I would finally meet Sean, long after Dink disbanded.

In 2009, I was opening my business and there was a commercial/residential glass company in my plaza owned Al and Amanda Montigney. As I was introducing myself to each of my neighbors, Amanda was the first client to sign up with me.

It worked out well for me, because I wanted mirrors in my studio and Al and his crew were able to help me with that. One of those installers was none other than Sean himself, coincidentally Amanda’s older brother.

When installation began, Sean was one of the staff members who came to help

We got to talking about our lives and interests and it didn’t take long before I found out what band he used to be a part of.

I chuckled and said: You and I recorded at the same studio! Greg Feezel recorded my first album.

From there on out, Sean and I always had music as a common interest.

Those who know the story well, know that I would go on to start a relationship with Al and Amanda’s daughter, Marissa, who I’m now married to and we have our son Sebastian.

And even though Sean and I didn’t have a great deal of contact throughout the years, he was actually involved in mirror installation every time I expanded my business.

As Sebastian has grown up and come to love music just as much as I do, it’s been a constant conversation about his “Uncle” Sean and the time he spent in Dink.

A couple of years ago, Sean was diagnosed with a rare form of eye cancer. When we found out, we knew the news wasn’t good.

Sean still passionately performed music and had a house full to the brim with instruments, many of which were synthesizers used to make layers of droning, instrumental music that was far removed from the work of Dink.

A small concert was held last year bringing many fans of Sean and Dink together to hear him play and it was Sebastian’s first introduction to what Sean was capable of.

Not long ago, Marissa told me that Sean was a big fan of Depeche Mode and I thought I’d play a cover of one of their songs to post on Facebook so he could hear it. I thought it might give him at least a few moments of happiness.

Sean’s condition worsened and the last few months saw his health take a dramatic turn. Marissa and I were able to visit him in a nursing home a few weeks ago when he was still coherent and we brought him lunch so he wasn’t relying on the food where he was staying. He was appreciative and loving and only had plans to get better and go back home.

That day wouldn’t come.

Last week, Marissa asked if I wanted to meet her at the hospital to see him. I had a break during my work day and met her there. Sean was fading but was still aware of the people in the room who were there to see him: his girlfriend Cheryl, Marissa, Amanda, longtime family friend (Donna)and myself.

When Donna left, I came to Sean’s side and thought I’d offer him the same token of love I offered my father in his final days: You want to listen to some music?

He looked over at me and nodded.

I pulled up YouTube and found the video for “Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode. I hit play, turned the volume up slightly and laid my phone against his chest.

We were holding hands and I asked him: Does it sound okay?

He nodded, squeezed my hand, and just listened.

When the song ended, we held hands a bit longer and I knew it was time for me to say goodbye so I could get back to work.

I told him I loved him and that I’d see him again.

Sebastian, Marissa and Amanda saw him on the day that he passed, August 10.

Sean, I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to know each other better. I’m sure we would have gotten along famously. It’s hard for music fanatics to not have a lot of respect for one another. Rest assured, I’ll never listen to Depeche Mode the same way again and I’ve been a fan of that band since the mid-80s.

You’ll be happy to know that your little guy, Sebastian, is probably going to have a lot of your DNA in him. He’s young, but he’s got potential when it comes to music.

I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to cover “Never Let Me Down Again” for you in your memory. It’s not that it’s a hard song to sing or play, I just don’t want to fuck it up. I figure, you deserve a good cover song and I will ALWAYS remember you when I hear it.

As Sebastian gets older, I promise we’ll keep your memory alive. He needs to know how much you cared about him and, had time allowed, what you could have taught him.

The good thing about music is that it outlives all of us.

And know that every time I walk into my studio, I’ll have a little piece of you there every time I see my mirror.

We’re flying high
We’re watching the world pass us by
Never want to come down
Never want to put my feet back down on the ground

See the stars, they’re shining bright
Everything’s alright tonight

“Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode

Last week, some news broke out in my little microcosm of the fitness industry where a certain “doctor” was exposed for stealing the content of a coach.

And when I say stealing, what I mean, is that either the doctor himself or whoever he has handling his Instagram account completely swiped the content of a coach in the industry with little to no change in the sentences or wording and posted it as if it were his own.

According to the coach, it’s happened several times and the doctor in reference has blocked him so as not to have to answer for his actions.

I’ve never understood this.

Yes, I understand the ease with which you can swipe someone else’s content.

Yes, I understand that creating content can be time consuming.

Yes, I understand that some people aren’t terribly creative and would rather someone else handle that work for them.

What I struggle to understand is that every day we (as health professionals of all kinds) are in countless situations where we might have to share wisdom about health, nutrition, medications, mindset, emotions, injuries, sets, reps, calories, bloodwork and more and we have to do it with the knowledge in our head at that moment in time.

Say for instance, a client comes up to me and asks: Jason, how much protein should I be eating in a day?

My reponse to that client is the perfect solution to creating content: How do I express a way that a given person can estimate their protein intake?

That answer can come in the form of a Tweet, a video, a blog, an Instagram reel, a Facebook post, a podcast episode, etc.

Done correctly, that answer can provide content for all of those platforms so that the creator can use and reuse content over and over again.

So, while it’s unfortunate that a doctor with a following of 2.1 million people on Instagram alone has chosen to rip off the work of someone who’s followed by a fraction as many people (but who nonetheless can speak and create content in a way that resonates with many), there is no legitimate reason why they can’t take a few moments to be original.

Yeah, it’s time consuming.

And maybe, said doctor wouldn’t have landed so many followers if they had been creating content with their own voice.

But in a world that’s increasingly creating content with the use of artificial intelligence, maybe I’m just a purist because the only voice you’ll ever get from me is mine alone.

Be original and if you can’t be original, at least give credit to people who make great content by sharing it, not stealing it.

(Photo courtesy of Etienne Girardet)